Fife Pilgrim Way

Pilgrims have been making their way across Fife to St Andrews since at least the 11th century.

The pilgrims’ journey to St Andrews began with a perilous crossing of the River Forth until, in about 1070, Queen Margaret, wife of Malcolm Canmore, King of the Scots, stepped in. The medieval queen, who would later become a saint, paid for a ferry to take pilgrims across the Forth to North Queensferry, although some pilgrims preferred to cross upriver and would land at Culross.

During their pilgrimage, medieval nobles stayed in Fife’s castles and grand homes while less well-connected pilgrims stayed in inns and hostels along the way or found a bed in a monastery, a chapel, an alms-house - or slept under the stars.

After leaving Dunfermline, they’d trek across the centre of Fife, where thieves and robbers lurked, along with wolves, lynx and boar. The tall spires of St Andrews Cathedral must have been a welcome sight to these medieval travellers as they walked the final few miles of their spiritual journey.

Pilgrims aren’t the only ones who have walked Fife Pilgrim Way. For several hundred years, miners walked this route on their way to the coalface, several miles below the hills, fields and coastline of Fife. most obvious remnant of Fife’s mining heritage along Fife Pilgrim Way is the winding wheel at Lochore Meadows Country Park, once the site of the Mary Pit, one of over 50 coal mines that were once under the Kingdom of Fife.

Many of the villages and towns in central Fife were built by local landowners for miners and their families. Although the pits are long gone, Culross, Kinglassie and Lochore are tangible proof of the regenerative qualities – and strength - of Fife’s mining communities.